Jasenovac concentration camp

Jasenovac concentration camp was the largest extermination and concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) during World War II. The camp was established by the Ustaše regime in August 1941 and dismantled in April 1945. In Jasenovac, the largest number of victims were ethnic Serbs, seen as the main racial enemy of the ISC. The camp also held Jews, Roma, Croats and a number of Yugoslav Partisans.[1]

Jasenovac was a complex of five sub-camps [2] covering over 240 km2 (93 sq mi) on both banks of the Sava river. The largest camp was at Jasenovac, about 100 km (62 mi) southeast of Zagreb. The complex included large grounds at Donja Gradina directly across the Sava river, a Sisak children's concentration camp in Sisak, and a Stara Gradiška concentration camp.

"Legal order for the defense of the people and the state" dated April 17, 1941 ordered the death penalty for "infringement of the honour and vital interests of the Croatian people and the survival of the Independent State of Croatia",

"Legal order of races" and the "Legal order of the protection of Aryan blood and the honour of the Croatian people" dated April 30, 1941, and

"Order of the creation and definition of the racial-political committee" dated June 4, 1941.

These orders were enforced through the regular court system and through new special courts and mobile courts-martial with extended jurisdiction. In July, 1941, when existing jails could no longer contain the growing number of new inmates, the Ustaše government began clearing the ground for what would become the Jasenovac concentration camp.[3]

The Independent State of Croatia was created and supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It thus adopted their racial and political doctrines. Jasenovac had a role in the Nazi "final solution"; it was also used, however, in the ethnic cleansing of Romany and Serbian inhabitants. The Nazi institutions that directed the Ustaše's death camps were:

The office of foreign affairs, represented in Croatia by Siegfried Kasche.

The S.S., represented by a Gestapo official whose identity has not been fully established, but whom Jewish witnesses knew as "Miller".

The Reichfuhrung and the Wehrmacht.

The Nazis encouraged the Ustaše's anti-Jewish and anti-Roma actions and showed support for the anti-Serb policy. Soon, the Nazis began to make clear their genocidal goals, as shown by the speech Hitler gave to Slavko Kvaternik, at their meeting on July, 21, 1941:

The Jews are the bane of the human kind. If the Jews will be allowed to do as they will, like they are permitted in their Soviet heaven, than they will fulfill their most insane plans. And thus Russia became the center to the world's illness... if for any reason, one nation would endure the existence of a single Jewish family, that family would eventually become the center of a new plot. If there are no more Jews in Europe, nothing will hold the unification of the European nations... this sort of people cannot be integrated in the social order or into an organized nation. They are parasites on the body of a healthy society, that live off of expulsion of decent people. One cannot expect them to fit into a state that requires order and discipline. There is only one thing to be done with them: To exterminate them. The state holds this right since, while precious men die on the battlefront, it would be nothing less than criminal to spare these bastards. They must be expelled, or -- if they pose no threat to the public -- to be imprisoned inside concentration camps and never be released." [4]

The Jasenovac complex was built between August 1941 and February 1942. The first two camps, Krapje and Bročica, were closed in November 1941.[5]

The three newer camps continued to function until the end of the war:

Ciglana (Jasenovac III)

Kozara (Jasenovac IV)

Stara Gradiška (Jasenovac V)

The camp was constructed, managed and supervised by Department III of the Ustaška Narodna Služba or UNS (lit. "Ustaše People's Service"), a special police force of the ISC. Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić was head of the UNS. Individuals managing the camp at different times included Miroslav Majstorović and Dinko Šakić.[6]

The Ustaše interned, tortured and executed men, women and children in Jasenovac. The largest number of victims were Serbs, but other victims included Jews, Bosnian Muslims,[7]Gypsies, and Croatian resistance members opposed to the regime (i.e. Yugoslav Partisans or their sympathizers, categorized by the Ustaše as "communists"). Upon arrival at the camp, the prisoners were marked with colors, similar to the use of Nazi concentration camp badges: blue for Serbs, and red for communists (non-Serbian resistance members), while Gypsies had no marks (this practice was later abandoned.).[8] Most victims were killed at execution sites near the camp: Granik, Gradina, and other places. Those kept alive were mostly skilled at needed professions and trades (doctors, pharmacists, electricians, shoemakers, goldsmiths, and so on) and were employed in services and workshops at Jasenovac[9]

The living conditions in the camp evidenced the severity typical in Nazi death camps: a meager diet, deplorable accommodations, and cruel behavior by the Ustaše guards. Also, as in many camps, conditions would be improved temporarily during visits by delegations—such as the press delegation that visited in February 1942 and a Red Cross delegation in June 1944—and reverted after the delegation left.[10]

Food: Again, typical of Nazi death camps, the diet of inmates at Jasenovac was insufficient to sustain life: The sorts of food they consumed changed during the camp's existence. In camp Brocice, inmates were given a "soup" made of hot water with starch for breakfast, and beans for lunch and dinner (served at 6:00, 12:00 and 21:00).[11] Food in Camp No. III was initially better, consisting of potatoes instead of beans; however, in January the diet was changed to a single daily serving of thin "turnip soup".[12] By the end of the year, the diet had been changed again, to three daily portions of thin gruel made of water and starch.[13] Food changed repeatedly thereafter.

Water: Jasenovac was even more severe than most death camps in one respect, a general lack of potable water. Prisoners were forced to drink water from the Sava river contaminated with hren (horseradish).[14]

Accommodations: In the first camps, Brocice and Krapje, inmates slept in standard concentration-camp barracks, with three tiers of bunks. In Camp No. III, which housed some 3,000 inmates, inmates initially slept in the attics of the workshops, in an open depot designated as a railway "tunnel", or simply in the open. A short time later, eight barracks were erected.[15][16] Inmates slept in six of these barracks, while the other two were used as a "clinic" and a "hospital", where ill inmates were concentrated to die or be liquidated.[17][18][19][20][21]

Forced labor: As in all concentration camps, Jasenovac inmates too had to toil some 11 hours of hard forced labor, under the eye of the Ustaše captors, who would execute any inmate for most trivial reasons, allegedly for "sabotaging labor".[22][23][24] The labor section was overseen by Ustasas Hinko Dominik Picilli and Tihomir Kordić, when the first would personally lash inmates to work harder.[25][26] He divided the "Jasenovac labor force" into 16 groups, including groups of construction, brick-works, metal-works, agriculture and etc... The inmates would die from the hard work, of which brick-works are considered hard.[27] Work in blacksmiths was also not idle, since the inmates forged the Ustaše knives and other weapons[28] and work in the construction of dikes was most feared.[29][30][31]

Sanitation: Inside the camp, squalor and lack of sanitation reigned: clutter, blood, vomit and bodies filled the barracks, which were also full of pests and of the foul scent of the pail in which natural needs were done in the evening. The bucket tended to spill its content.[32][33] Due to exposure to the elements, inmates suffered from health impairment that led to epidemics of typhus, typhoid, malaria, pleuritis, fluenza, dysentery and diphtheria.[34] During pauses in labor (5:00-6:00; 12:00-13:00, 17:00-20:00[35]), inmates were allowed to empty their bowels in public latrines, which consisted of big pits that lay bare in the open field, covered with planks. Inmates would tend to fall inside, and often died. The Ustaše encouraged this by either having internees separate the planks, or by physically drowning inmates inside. The pit would overflow of floods and rains, and was also drained into the lake, from which water were taken.[36][37][38][39] The inmate rags and blankets were thin to prevent exposure to frost, as was the shelter of the barracks.[40] The clothes and blankets were seldom and poorly cleansed, as inmates were allotted to wash them briefly in the lake's waters once a month[41] save during winter time, when the lake froze. Then, a sanitation device was erected in a warehouse, where few clothes were insufficiently boiled.[35]

Lack of personal possessions: The inmates were stripped of their belongings and clothes. As inmates, none were given to them other than inmate-clothing, made out of rags. In winter, inmates were given thin "rain-coats" and they were allowed to make light sandals. Inmates were given a personal food bowl, designated to contain 0.4 litres of "soup" they were fed with. Inmates whose bowl was missing (stolen in order to do feces in it) would receive no food.[42] During delegation visits, inmates were given bowls twice large with spoons. Additionally, at such times, inmates were given colored tags.

Anxiety: The fear of death, and the paradox of a situation in which the living dwell near the dead, had great impact on the internees. Basically, an inmate's life in a concentration camp can be viewed in the optimal way when looking at it in three stages: arrival to camp, living inside it, and the release. The first stage consisted of the shock caused by the hardships in transit to camp. The Ustaše would fuel this shock by liquidating a number of inmates on arrival and by temporarily housing new-arrivals in warehouses, attics, in the train tunnel and outdoors.[43] After the inmates grew familiar of the life in camp, they would enter the second and most critical phase: living through the anguish of death, and the sorrow, hardships and abuse. The peril of death was most prominent in "public performances for public punishment" or selections, when inmates would be lined in groups and individuals would be randomly pointed out to be killed facing the rest. The Ustaše would make this worse by prolonging the process, patrolling about and asking questions, gazing at inmates, choosing them and then refrain and point out another.[44][45] As inmates, people could react to the Ustaše crimes in an active or passive manner. The activists would form resistance movements and groups, steal food, plan escapes and revolts, contacts with the outside world.[46] The passive inmates, the majority, would react by attempt to survive, to go through the day unharmed. This is not "going in line to slaughter", but rather another approach to survival, which deprived the Ustaše of the possibility to completely dehumanize the inmates. However, some of these inmates became in this way utterly primitive, as their whole life revolved around committing orders and eating a bowl of soup. Thus they became "muselmans": physically appearing as living skeletons, but mentally stripped of their humanity beyond hope of salvation. All inmates suffered from psychological problems to some extent: obsessive thoughts of food, paranoia, delusions, day-dreams, lack of self-control.[47] Some inmates reacted with attempts at documenting the atrocities, like Nikola Nikolić, Djuro Schwartz and Ilija Ivanović, who all tried to memorize and even write of events, dates and details. Such deeds were dangerous, since writing was punishable by death and tracking dates was hard.[48]

Most of the executions of Jews at Jasenovac occurred prior to August 1942. Thereafter, the ISC started to deport them to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In general, Jews were initially sent to Jasenovac from all parts of Croatia after being gathered in Zagreb, and from Bosnia and Herzegovina after being gathered in Sarajevo. Some, however, were transported directly to Jasenovac from other cities and smaller towns.

A knife, strapped to the hand, which was used by the Ustaše militia for the speedy killing of inmates in concentration camps.

In the late summer of 1942, tens of thousands of Serbian villagers were sent to Jasenovac from the Kozara mountain area (in Bosnia) where ISC forces were fighting against the Yugoslav Partisans.[49] Most of the men were killed at Jasenovac, but women were sent to forced labor in Germany. Children were taken from their mothers and either killed or dispersed to Catholic orphanages.[50]

On the night of August 29, 1942, the prison guards made bets among themselves as to who could liquidate the largest number of inmates. One of the guards, Petar Brzica, reportedly cut the throats of about 1,360 new arrivals with a butcher knife that became known as srbosjek ("Serb-cutter"). Other participants who confessed to participating in the bet included Ante Zrinušić, who killed some 600 inmates,[51] and Mile Friganović, who gave a detailed and consistent report of the incident.[52] Friganović admitted to having killed 1,100 inmates. He specifically recounted his torture of an old man named Vukasin; he attempted to make the man bless Ante Pavelić, which the old man refused to do, although Friganović cut off his ears, nose and tongue after each refusal. Ultimately, he cut out the old man's eyes, tore out his heart, and slashed his throat. This incident was witnessed by Dr. Nikola Nikolić.[53]

Besides sporadic killings and deaths due to the poor living conditions, many inmates arriving at Jasenovac were scheduled for systematic liquidation. An important criterion for selection was the duration of a prisoner's anticipated detention. Strong men capable of labor and sentenced to less than 3 years of incarceration were allowed to live. All inmates with indeterminate sentences or sentences of 3 years or more were immediately scheduled for liquidation, regardless of their fitness.[54][55][56][57]

Systematic extermination varied both as to place and form. Some of the executions were mechanical, following Nazi methodology, while others were manual. The mechanical means of extermination included:

Cremation: The Ustaše cremated living inmates, who were sometimes drugged and sometimes fully awake, as well as corpses. The first cremations took place in the brick factory ovens in January 1942.[58][59] Engineer Hinko Dominik Picilli perfected this method by converting seven of the kiln's furnace chambers into more sophisticated crematories.[60][61][62][63][64][65][66] Crematories were also placed in Gradina, across the Sava River. According to the State Commission, however, "there is no information that it ever went into operation."[67] Later testimony, however, say the Gradina crematory had become operational.[68][69] Some bodies were buried rather than cremated, as shown by exhumation of bodies late in the war.

Gassing and poisoning: The Ustaše, in following the Nazi example, as set in Auschwitz and Sajmište, tried to utilize poisonous gas to kill inmates that arrived in Stara-Gradiska. They first tried to gas the women and children that arrived from camp Djakovo with gas-vans that Simo Klaić addressed as "green Thomas".[70][71] The method was later replaced with stationary gas-chambers with Zyklon-B and Sulphur monoxide.[72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79]

Manual methods, the Ustaše's favorites, were liquidation that took part in utilizing sharp or blunt craftsmen tools: knives, saws, hammers and et cetera. These liquidations took place in various locations:

Granik: Granik was a ramp used to unload goods of Sava boats. In winter 1943-44, season agriculture laborers became unemployed, while large transports of new internees arrived and the need for liquidation, in light of the Axis' expected defeat, were large. Therefore, the "Maks" Luburic devised a plan to utilize the crane as a gallows on which slaughter would be committed, so that the bodies could be dumped into the stream of the flowing river. In the autumn, the Ustaše NCO's came in every night for some 20 days, with lists of names of people who were incarcerated in the warehouse, stripped, chained, beaten and than taken to the "Granik", where ballasts were tied to the wire that was bent on their arms, and their intestines and neck were slashed, and they were thrown into the river with a blow of a blunt tool in the head. The method was later enhanced, so that inmates were tied in pairs, back to back, their bellies were cut before they were tossed into the river alive.[80][81][82][83]

Gradina: The Ustaše utilized empty areas in the vicinity of the villages Donja Gradina and Ustice, where they encircled an area marked for slaughter and mass graves in wire. The Ustaše killed victims with knives or smashed their skulls with mallets. When gypsies arrived in the camp, they did not undergo selection, but were rather concentrated under the open skies at a section of camp known as "III-C". From there the gypsies were taken to liquidation in Gradina, working on the dike (men) or in the corn-fields in Ustice (women) in between liquidations. Thus Gradina and Ustica became Roma mass grave sites. Furthermore, small groups of gypsies were utilized as gravediggers that actually participated in the slaughter at Gradina. Thus the extermination at the site grew until it became the main killing-ground in Jasenovac. Grave-sites were also located in Ustica and in Draksenic.[84][85][86]

Mlaka and Jablanac: Two sites used as collection and labor camps for the women and children in camps III and V, but also as places where many of these women and children, as well as other groups, were liquidated at the Sava bank in between the two locations.

Velika Kustarica: According to the state-commission, as far as 50,000 people were killed here in the winter amid 1941 and 1942.[87] There are more evidence suggesting that killings took place there at that time and afterwards.[88][89]

In April 1945, as Yugoslav Partisans units approached the camp, the Ustaše camp supervisors attempted to erase traces of the bad things they did by working the death camp at full capacity. On April 22, 600 prisoners revolted; 520 were killed and 80 escaped.[90] Before abandoning the camp shortly after the prisoner revolt, the Ustaše killed the remaining prisoners, blasted and destroyed the buildings, guardhouses, torture rooms, the "Picili Furnace", and the other structures. Upon entering the camp, the partisans found only ruins, soot, smoke, and dead bodies.

During the following months of 1945, the grounds of Jasenovac were thoroughly destroyed by prisoners of war. The Allied forces captured 200 to 600 Croatian Home Guard members. Laborers completed destruction of the camp, leveling the site and dismantling the two-kilometer long, four-meter high wall that surrounded it.

Historians have had difficulty calculating the number of victims at Jasenovac. Estimates of total deaths range from tens of thousands of deaths, which is the most commonly cited contemporary figure, to hundreds of thousands, which was the most common estimate prior to the 1990s.

The estimates vary due to lack of accurate records, the methods used for making estimates, and sometimes the political biases of the estimators. In some cases, entire families were exterminated, leaving no one to submit their names to the lists. On the other hand, it has been found that the lists include the names of people who died elsewhere, whose survival was not reported to the authorities, or who are counted more than once on the lists.

The Jasenovac Memorial Area maintains a list of the names of 69,842 Jasenovac victims, including 39,580 Serbs, 14,599 Romanies, 10,700 Jews, 3,462 Croats, as well as people of some other ethnicities. The memorial estimates total deaths at 85,000 to 100,000. Former director Simo Brdar, however, estimated that at least 360,000 people died at the camp.[91]

The Belgrade Museum of the Holocaust keeps a list of the names of 80,022 victims (mostly from Jasenovac), including approximately 52,000 Serbs, 16,000 Jews, 12,000 Croats and 10,000 Romanies. Milan Bulajic, former director, estimates total deaths at 500,000-700,000.

The Jasenovac Research Institute estimates 300-700,000 deaths at the camp.

Antun Miletić, a researcher at the Military Archives in Belgrade, has collected data on Jasenovac since 1979.

In 1998, the Bosniak Institute published SFR Yugoslavia's final List of war victims from the Jasenovac camp (created in 1992).[92] The list contained the names of 49,602 victims at Jasenovac, including 26,170 Serbs, 8,121 Jews, 5,900 Croats, 1471 Romanies, 787 Muslims (nationality unknown), 6,792 of unidentifiable ethnicity, and some listed simply as "others".

The Yad Vashem center claims that over 500,000 Serbs were killed in the ISC,[93] including those who were killed at Jasenovac, where approximately 600,000 victims of all ethnicities were killed.[94] The same figures are concluded by the Simon-Wiesentahl center. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, also citated in quote by the Jewish virtual library, the victim figures are as follows:[95]

The documentation from the time of Jasenovac revolves around the different sides in the battle for Yugoslavia: The Germans and Italians on the one hand, and the Partisans on the other. There are also sources originating from the documentation of the Ustaše themselves and of the Vatican. These sources are in times considered contemporary because German and Ustaše sources tend to exaggerate, but the comparison of all different sources can give a reliable portrayt of the historical truth.

German generals issued reports of the number of victims as the war progressed. German military commanders gave different figures for the number of Serbs, Jews and others killed on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. They circulated figures of 400,000 Serbs (Alexander Löhr); 350,000 Serbs (Lothar Rendulic); around 300,000 (Edmund Glaise von Horstenau); in 1943; "600-700,000 until March 1944" (Ernst Fick); 700,000 (Massenbach).[96][97] Hermann Neubacher calculates:

"A third must become Catholic, a third must leave the country, and a third must die!" This last point of their program was accomplished. When prominent Ustasha leaders claimed that they slaughtered a million Serbs (including babies, children, women and old men), that is, in my opinion, a boastful exaggeration. On the basis of the reports submitted to me, I believe that the number of defenseless victims slaughtered to be three quarters of a million. (Neubacher, Dr. Hermann. Special Assignment in the Southeast, p. 18-30.)

Italian generals, who were more overwhelmed by the atrocious Ustaše slaughter, also reported of similar figures to their commanders.[98] The Vatican's sources also speak of similar figures, E.g. of 350,000 Serbs slaughtered by the end of 1942 (Eugen Tisserant[99]) and "over 500,000 people" at all (Godfried Danneels[100]).

The Ustaše themselves gave more` exaggerated assumptions of the number of people they killed. Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić, commander-in-chief of all the Croatian camps, announced the great "efficiency" of the Jasenovac camp at a ceremony on October 9, 1942 (keep in mind that Jasenovac operated until 1945). During the banquet which followed, he reported with pride: "We have slaughtered here at Jasenovac more people than the Ottoman Empire was able to do during its occupation of Europe."[101] Although the account may appear somewhat exaggerated, its truthfulness can be found in several other Ustašee accounts. A circular of the Ustaše general headquarters that reads: "the concentration and labor camp in Jasenovac can receive an unlimited number of internees"[102]. In the same spirit, Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, once captured by Yugoslav forces, admitted, in an attempt to somewhat minimize the rate of crimes committed in Jasenovac (e.g. Miroslav claimed to have personally killed 100 people, extremely understated,[103]) that during his three months of administration, 20,000 to 30,000 people died,[104] whereas in other sources it is displayed as 40,000.[105][106]

A report of the National Committee of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and their collaborators, dated November 15, 1945, which was commissioned by the new government of Yugoslavia under Tito, stated that 500,000-600,000 people were killed at the Jasenovac complex. These figures were cited by researcher Israel Gutman in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and others.

Logically, the number of casualties in Jasenovac is affected by several factors:

The camp's size: Jasenovac was a complex of various camps, including Krapje and Brocice, Ciglana, Stara-Gradiska, Sisak, Djakovo, Jablanac, Mlaka, Draksenic, Gradina and Ustice, Dubica, Kosutarica, Jasenovac's tannery. These camps and mass graveyards covered 120 square miles. This fact is also important since in the list of names found in the Jasenovac memorial, only 4000 victims are of Stara-Gradiska, which points just how partial the list really is.

The length of the camp's existence: Jasenovac stood since mid-August 1941 to May 1945. Mass-extermination took place in mass in the whole of 1941-1942, and again in the second half of 1944. From March to December 1943, almost no mass-atrocities took place, whilst death due to health impairment or in individual slaughter (to wit, that any guard could kill any inmate at any given time) continued.

The camp's classification: besides being a concentration camp, Jasenovac was an extermination camp. For comparison, Belzec and Kulmhof, both small and both existed for a significantly shorter period of time, exterminated over 300,000 and 128,000 accordingly.

The camp's population: Jasenovac housed and used as a place of extermination for Serbs, Jews, Roma, Sinti, Slovens and other ethnicities, whereas in all extermination camps only Jews and Roma were exterminated, therefore, the number of casualties should be in accordance.

Additionally, crematories were constructed in Jasenovac as back as January 1942, due to difficulties of burial, thus implying the massive death rate at hand there. The same goes for gassing that also took place in Stara-Gradiska later that year, in both chambers and vans.

Miroslav Majstorović, an Ustaše infamous for his command periods in Jasenovac and Stara-Gradiska,[107] named "Fra Sotona" (brother devil) for his cruelty and Christian heritage, was captured by the Yugoslav communist forces, tried and executed in 1946.

Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić was the commandant of the Ustaska Obrna, or Ustaše defense, thus being held responsible for all crimes committed under his supervision in Jasenovac, which he visited two or three times a month or so.[108] fled to Spain, but was assassinated by a Yugoslav agent in 1969.

Dinko Šakić fled to Argentina, but was eventually extradited, tried and sentenced, in 1999, by Croatian authorities to 20 years in prison, dying in prison in 2008.

Petar Brzica was an Ustaše officer who, in the night of August 29, 1942, allegedly slaughtered about 1,360 people, Brzica's fellow Ustaše also took part in that crime, as part of a competition of throat cutting. Brzica is also known for having killed an inmate by beating him, on the departure of administrator Ivica Matkovic, March 1943.[109] He later fled to the United States. His name was on a list of 59 Nazis living in the US given by a Jewish organization to the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the 1970s. His fate after that is not publicly known.

The Jasenovac Memorial Museum was temporarily abandoned during the Yugoslav wars. In November 1991, Simo Brdar, a former associate director of the Memorial, collected the documentation from the museum and brought it to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Brdar kept the documents until 2001, when he transferred them to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with the help of SFOR and the government of Republika Srpska.

The New York City Parks Department, the Holocaust Park Committee and the Jasenovac Research Institute, with the help of US Congressman Anthony Weiner, established a public monument to the victims of Jasenovac in April 2005 (the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the camps.) Ten Yugoslavian Holocaust survivors were there, as well as diplomats from Serbia, Bosnia and Israel. It remains the only public monument to Jasenovac victims outside of the Balkans. Annual commemorations are held there every April.

↑Shorthand notes of the Ljubo Milos case, p. 292-293. Antun Vrban himself admmitted of his crimes: "Q. And what did you do with the children A. The weaker ones we poisoned Q. How? A. We led them into a yard... and into it we threw gas Q. What gas? A. Zyklon."(Qtd. M. Shelach (Ed.),"The History of the holocaust: Yugoslavia")